“Here’s a fun fact: Hackers, just like bankers, real estate agents and collectors of Star Trek memorabilia, attend conferences. Even better: they play games at the conferences,” Adam Levin reports for ABC News.

“One of the games they play has attendees aggressively competing to access any device in the hall, thereby demonstrating prowess in obtaining sensitive information. The goal is to exploit any vulnerability, or crack that which is perceived to be impenetrable, and share details for both educational purposes and bragging rights,” Levin reports. “This is the kind of thing you’d expect at a Black Hat hacker conference and why people with sensitive information on computers probably shouldn’t bring them to the party. Especially employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission Trading and Markets division. And they really shouldn’t have brought their computers with them. Except they did. Yes. This really happened.”

Levin reports, “Computers owned by the Securities and Exchange Commission Trading and Markets division were brought by SEC staffers to a hacker convention. They contained unencrypted, step-by-step instructions to shut down our financial trading system. Essentially: A Hacker’s Guide to our Financial Universe.”

It’s another Reuters story without any hard facts. Reuters and DigiTimes are both about as reliable as each other. I would be reluctant to believe this version of events unless there was some additional information coming from a non-Reuters source too.

What “vulnerability”? I am sure that the SEC was using those ultra secure Windows PC’s to insure the safety of that information. That is how they will be securing the confidentiality of our medical records now!

One of the first of people to be brought to account are those members of Congress who, years ago, allowed our social security numbers to be used for commercial transactions. That was an exercise in stupidity without parallel, except for the outrageous refusal to repeal and rescind their mistake.